Weíre told it is unlikely to pass anyway
when voted upon this week, but Iíd like to get in a word against the idea of
an amendment that would require a two-thirds supermajority to pass future tax
increases. Iíve always felt the idea works against GOP interests and that
Democrats have always been happy to have Republicans carry it as one of their
banners.

Remember Spencer Reibman? He is one of
the early supply-siders who worked for Rep. John Rousselot, when John was
still in the House. It was Spencer who drafted the original Taxpayersí
Protection Amendment in 1979, as HJ Res. 278 and SJ76 in the Senate, where it
was sponsored by Colorado Senator Bill Armstrong. Spencer now teaches a course
in supply-side economics at Georgia State, which I think is the only
introductory course of its kind in the country. He sent me a letter this week,
reminding me of the history of the legislation, and also how you have been an
ardent supporter for lo these 20 years. Hereís how he put it:

Although the language was a
bit clumsy on inflation and tax indexing, it was not so clumsy as to keep a
young firebrand, named Newt Gingrich, from becoming an early co-signer and
supporter. Newt was always looking for issues that would differentiate the
two parties. His staff was responsive and helpful to me when the time came
to enlist other co-signers of Rousselot-Armstrong that summer of 1979. Newt,
whatever else may be said about him, where he has been on issues, or where
he is going, has been a consistent supporter of this concept for almost
twenty years. Indeed, at the margin, it may turn out to be his legacy if he
is willing to fight hard enough to see it passed. (Jack Kemp, by the way,
was not a co-signer, not wanting to dilute his efforts to bring rates down
by statute.)

In fact, Newt, I've always
opposed the idea and influenced Jack to not participate -- not because he did
not want to dilute his energies, but because he believes tax rates should be
voted up or down without having to climb over elaborate procedural rules. Iíve
always felt this was the perfect example of paving a road to hell with good
intentions, which Republicans can do as well as Democrats. The people always
get screwed by measures like this which are designed to help them. It is like
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and the Pay-go rules, which have wound up killing off
tax-reduction initiatives year after year. G-R-H led President Bush to the tax
increases of the budget deal of 1990 which you opposed with such passion that
it at least helped elevate you to the Speakership. These are legislative
derivatives, though, by which members pass laws preventing them from doing
something they know their constituents want them to do. These
balanced-budget vehicles are all based on the assumption that the electorate
is stupid and venal and will find every opportunity to raid the
Treasury -- stealing from the rich to give to the poor. They are
anti-democratic in the sense that they reduce the options of the electorate
and always put tax cutters on the defensive. The one Spencer wrote for
Rousselot tried to make it supply-side safe as much as possible, but the basic
idea remains anathema to me and should be abandoned by you. Get rid of G-R-H
and the Pay-go rules as well. Institute dynamic scoring on top of the emerging
surpluses youíve been trying to hide from the spenders. The idea may have made
some logical sense during the days of deficit politics. But it has none in
this new era of surplus politics.

Remember, just as we have moved from
deficit to surplus, and from inflation to deflation, we may find ourselves on
the lower side of the Laffer Curve at some future point. That is, the
electorate will for good reason wish to raise tax rates. It may then have to
give Democrats control of Congress for that to occur. Know what I mean? What
goes around, comes around. When I first came to Washington, it was always the
liberals who complained about the filibuster rule in the Senate, which was
used to protect minority views. Now, itís the conservatives who complain about
the ability of the liberals to block popular measures with the procedural
rules -- as the Democrats did in 1989 in blocking the cut in the capital-gains
tax.

The GOP agenda is replete with ideas that
were originally designed to deal with their minority position in the
government, and now only serve to confuse the electorate about Republican
intent. You should go through the whole bag of ideas and discard the most
moth-eaten. Tax limitation should be one of the first to
go.